


Fractals at Dawn

by tryslora



Series: All Our Yesterdays [29]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Community: fullmoon_ficlet, Kid Fic, M/M, Mathematics, fractals, sunrise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-19
Updated: 2014-07-19
Packaged: 2018-02-09 14:24:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1986318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryslora/pseuds/tryslora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles doesn’t expect to find Danny corrupting his daughter… by teaching her to pull all-nighters while coding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fractals at Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for prompt #77 - Sunrise at fullmoon_ficlet. As always, I do not own the world nor characters of Teen Wolf.

Stiles peels himself from the bed just before dawn when Stephen fusses. He picks him up and offers a bottle, cradling him in one arm while he manages to get himself into the rocking chair they brought out of the attic. He tries to keep it quiet, but the soft squeak wakes Jackson, who rolls over and rubs at his eyes.

“I didn’t mind missing this part of Nikki’s life,” Jackson mutters, and Stiles hushes him.

“If you could convince your friend to get another place to stay, you could have the guest room back and not have a kid sleeping in your room,” Stiles whispers. Jackson just looks at him until Stiles’s gaze drops because he really has nothing else he can say.

He’s lying when he says he wants Jackson in the guest room. He’s not lying about wanting Danny to move out—after a week, having a guest is wearing on Stiles’s nerves. The house was meant for two men, not three adults, one teenager, and two small children. It was never meant to be a pack house, and yet, it seems to be turning into one.

Stephen pushes the bottle away with a small snuffle, and tries to roll in Stiles’s grasp. He lifts him back into the crib, tugging the blanket into place over the infant.

“Come back to bed,” Jackson murmurs, but Stiles shakes his head.

“I’m just going to go down and get something to drink.” Stiles makes a motion at the door, offers to bring something back because that’s only polite. He stops when Jackson cocks his head, frowning, then pushes the blankets away. “What is it?” Stiles asks.

“Nik’s up.”

“Before _dawn_? Not possible, she’s a teenager.”

Jackson pushes to his feet, padding barefoot across the floor, head cocked as he listens. “It is if she hasn’t gone to bed yet,” he mutters. “Danny’s up too.”

“That’s it, he has _got_ to move out.” Stiles yanks the door open, yanking the tie on his pajama pants to make it tighter so they don’t slide off his hips. He needs to present a _put together angry father_ look, not _disheveled just got out of bed_. Even though the look is ruined by Jackson looking _completely_ disheveled, his hair sticking up a bit, a scruff on his cheeks after not shaving for a few days. 

Stiles suspects they’d have a better chance of convincing people that nothing was going on if they didn’t _look_ like something was going on. Problem is, there is _nothing_ happening other than sharing a sleeping space since the hospital bed is gone and the couch is uncomfortable.

He doesn’t know what he thinks about that anymore.

Nikki meets them at the bottom of the stairs, her finger pressed to her lips. “Shh,” she hisses. “Don’t wake up Haley or Stephen.”

Stiles rakes a hand through his hair, wondering where his teenage daughter gets off trying to out-parent him. “Stephen’s already been up for a pre-dawn snack. The question is, Nik, what the hell are _you_ doing up?”

“Pre-dawn?” Nikki turns around in place, and Stiles lets his gaze slide over the rest of the room—Danny sitting on the couch, a laptop on the coffee table, the curtains pulled back with the bare beginnings of sunrise peeking in. “Oh.” Her voice is small. “I thought it was only like twoish.”

“It’s not the first time I’ve been up all night programming, and it won’t be the last.” Danny stands up and stretches. “Sorry, guys, we got distracted.”

Jackson lifts one corner of his lip in a quiet growl, and Nikki rolls her eyes. “ _Papa_.”

“No, he’s right. I screwed up.”

“I don’t want you teaching our daughter how to hack into government sites,” Stiles says dryly. “I’d like her to make it to eighteen without a permanent record. Unlike some of us.”

Danny spreads his hands. “I’m not doing anything illegal.”

“We were actually talking about fractals.” Nikki grabs onto Stiles, pulls him and Jackson onto the couch, bracketing her as she falls into place. Danny stands nearby, watching. “Look.” She turns the laptop around, code stretching down the screen. “It’s a simple graphics program. The math’s the real trick; once you plug in a formula, it’ll calculate out the fractal pattern and start sketching it through the levels. You can either set it to go on forever and interrupt it, or give it a number of levels to compute. This equation is simple, but it’s my favorite.”

She copies and pastes a bit of math from one file into her code, then her fingers fly to compile it and start it running. A single horizontal line appears across the screen, then two angular lines that start at the center and branch out on either side. Then each of those branches splits in the same way, then again, and again, until the lines seem to fly on the screen. Nikki lets it go for a time before she hits the keyboard and beams at them. “I never really thought about the relationship between math and graphics before Danny got here.”

Stiles can’t stop looking at the screen, his head slightly tilted to look at it sideways. From here, it seems obvious to him what she’s done. And it’s her _favorite_. He glances at Danny, but there’s nothing there to say that he planned this.

Of course, there’s nothing there to say it’s an accident, either.

“Go to bed, Nik.” Jackson pulls her into a rough hug, kisses the top of her head. “And no more all nighters. You might be excited by a new hobby, but it’s a hobby, and school still comes first. You need sleep.”

Nikki wrinkles her nose. “When you were my age—”

“I was a homicidal lizard.” Jackson’s tone is flat. “Not the right argument to use here, Nik. Yes, we snuck out and we did things that we would ground you for a month if you did, if not grounding you for your _life_. Danny had a record by the time he was fifteen, and I was an asshole. We also were in over our head in a world where people were dying constantly.”

“People are dying _now_ ,” Nikki points out. “Your argument is invalid. Yes, the world is different for me and Caleb, but it’s not all _that_ different anymore, now that the Nemeton’s awake again.”

“And we’re going to put it back to sleep.” Stiles tells her. “There are adults involved and it doesn’t have to rest on your shoulders. You don’t have to be stuck in the situation we were. We have a _pack_. All of us are working on it, and it’s not your problem.”

She presses her lips together thinly, and Stiles sees Lydia sitting there, working out problems in her mind, too stubborn to back down. “Yes, it is,” she says quietly. “It’s my problem as much as yours because I can feel it, Daddy. _I can feel it_.”

Stiles and Jackson exchange a _look_ because that’s never a good sign. And it’s not a surprise, not at all, not looking at the screen in front of them. And the worst part is that Danny doesn’t look surprised. He looks like he expected this, and that just makes Stiles’s heart sink.

“I know,” he says quietly. “I know you can feel it, but baby, don’t go off and do anything because you feel like you have to. We’re all in this together. Remember that.”

No, he did not just quote _High School Musical_ at his daughter. Not intentionally, at least.

She closes her eyes and hugs Jackson first, then Stiles, and as soon as she manages to get off the couch, she yanks Danny into a hug as well. He looks surprised before his arms go around her, his head leaning against her red curls briefly.

That sinking feeling only gets worse.

“I’ll go get some sleep.” Nikki disappears up the stairs quickly, and the door slams more loudly than she probably intends. They all go still, but there are no further sounds from upstairs; the little ones are still sleeping.

Jackson pulls something from his pocket and tosses it to Danny, who catches it automatically. “I should have thought of this before, since I haven’t given up the apartment yet. Go move into my place, since it seems like you’re sticking around, and I want you out of this house.”

“Jackson—”

Stiles shakes his head. “Danny, don’t. I get that something’s going on. We can all see what’s on that screen.” He reaches out, tilts the laptop so that it’s on its side; the fractal pattern becomes a branched tree, reaching out and up.

“She picked the pattern.”

“You encouraged it.” Stiles keeps his voice firm. “You’re here for a reason, and she’s _our_ daughter.”

“Who is probably listening at the air vents.” Jackson’s voice is low.

“Which is why we’re tabling this conversation for later. In Jackson’s apartment.” Which is still going to be _Jackson’s_ apartment as far as Stiles is concerned. If he doesn’t start thinking about it as _Danny’s_ apartment, he won’t start thinking about Jackson being a permanent addition to the house.

_Re_ -addition.

Stiles is so fucked, and he can see it so clearly, no matter how much he tries to avoid it. So he just keeps avoiding it, even in his own mind.

“Let me get settled in, and we’ll set a time. But make it soon.” Danny glances at the stairs. “She’s getting stronger, and I remember how hard it was for Lydia. I don’t think it’s any easier for Nikki. She’s got everyone around her, but she’s still stuck inside her own head for this. No one else can help her be a better banshee.”

Stiles has questions. He has _so many_ questions, and he wants to ask them _right now_ , but a hand on his arm stops him as Jackson presses a finger to his lips, then points up. Stiles touches his ear, and Jackson nods; Nikki’s definitely still awake, and Jackson can hear her. Which means this has to wait, no matter how much Stiles wants to push at it now.

Danny holds out his hand and Jackson claps his own into it, pulling the other man to him for a back thumping hug. Stiles does his best to bite his tongue, managing to not say a damned word while Danny walks out the door. As soon as it closes with a thunk, Stiles grabs Jackson’s wrist and yanks him off-balance, pulling him in close.

Stiles drops his mouth to Jackson’s ear and tries not to think about all the _other_ possible reasons this could be done as he whispers, “I don’t trust him.”

He feels the sharp smile against his throat, the way Jackson’s lips move over a path to Stiles’s ear before he murmurs, “Neither do I.”

Stiles leans into his touch, wonders if he imagines the nip to his earlobe that sends shivers down his spine and wakes his body up. He could move—he _should_ move—but it’s kind of nice standing like this, with Jackson’s arms around him, in a parody of a loving embrace. He closes his eyes and lets his head drop, leaning there for a long moment.

Jackson coughs, and Stiles pulls back, rubbing at his eyes. “As long as I’m up, I should probably hit the shower,” Stiles mutters.

“I’ll make sure Nik’s actually sleeping, and check on Haley,” Jackson offers.

They disentangle slowly, but Jackson pauses before he leaves. “We’ll put Stephen and Haley together in the guest room, and Nikki can have her own room back.”

“What about you?”

Jackson’s smile quirks only one side of his mouth. “I think I’m fine right where I am. Don’t you?”

Stiles licks his lips and Jackson’s smirk grows before he turns and walks away. Stiles definitely needs a shower. Either a very cold one, or a very long one. And he needs to decide exactly how far he’s going to let Jackson back into their lives, because the longer he goes, the more it just seems to _happen_ , whether he likes it or not.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me [on tumblr](http://tryslora.tumblr.com)!


End file.
